Navigating the BPM Software Landscape: A 7-Step Guide to Choosing the Perfect Solution for Your Business

Choosing the right BPM (Business Process Management) software for your company can be a daunting task due to the complexity of BPM and the significant differences in features and capabilities among products. Additionally, evaluating your business needs can be complex. Here are 7 steps that can help you accurately determine your business needs and evaluate if BPM software is the right fit for your company:

1. Do you need BPM software? Evaluate the need for new software before you start looking for a BPM system. You may need BPM software to eliminate data duplication, delayed approvals, increased dependency on paper, PDFs, and Excel sheets, and legacy interfaces that don’t adapt to your company’s evolving needs. If your company is experiencing any or all of these problems, it’s time to invest in the best BPM software.
2. Identify essential features that the tool should have Once the need for a BPM software is clear, it becomes much easier to pinpoint which features are essential for your business. Consider the following questions to determine the core features you’ll need:

• Is standardization more important than flexibility? This will help you determine the right level of customization.
• Are employees spending too much time on repetitive work? This will help you evaluate BPM software with strong automation capabilities, or even Robotic Process Automation (RPA) if needed.
• Does your process require frequent interaction with third parties? Your software should enable customers, suppliers, and other members outside your organization to interact with you through the system.
• Are you stuck with large volumes of unorganized data? Analytical reports, along with a secure and customizable database are essential. If these reports are easy to generate and read, it’s an added bonus.
• Is your company on the verge of scaling up? Avoid migration by choosing software that will grow with your company. Think of the future needs of your business and see if your software can keep up with those needs.
• Does your company rely on multiple legacy systems? You need to choose a software with a user-friendly interface that can bring all your systems – modern and legacy – together smoothly.

3. Get the right budget by presenting a value proposition to leadership To get your leadership on board with investing in a BPM software, you have to focus on results. While BPM might facilitate a lot of tasks for people in your department, executives and management may not be able to weigh in on task facilitation. You need to present the potential gains of a new software in their terms, not yours. Once you have a budget, you can instantly narrow down your list of choices.
4. Define deploy time, adoption time, and support standards When you dive into the BPM market, you’ll find that most BPM software companies will argue they have a fast deployment time and require little to no code. Having a timeframe that estimates process design, deployment, and adoption gives you an advantage. A typical process design takes about four months, but there are a few industry outliers that can deploy in a few weeks. The BPM software’s customer support reputation should also be considered in the decision process. Not all BPM software was built for business users, and not all is suitable for IT. Know who will frequently use the new software, and make sure they will have the support they need. If the software is known for having a high churn over rate